Paris Saint-Germain Dares to Dream Big

Onetime French Also-Ran Aims for Champions League Dominance—But Barcelona Has Other Plans

ENLARGE

Recent acquisition David Beckham, right, congratulates Zlatan Ibrahimovic after his goal against Olympic Marseille in their French Ligue 1 soccer match at Parc des Princes stadium in Paris on Feb. 24.
Reuters

By

Joshua Robinson

April 1, 2013 10:26 p.m. ET

PARIS—The tradition for fans at the Parc des Princes, Paris Saint-Germain's home stadium, is to begin every match with a booming chant of "Içi c'est Paris!" On game days, the words are also plastered all over the Parc. They're on scarves and T-shirts. And, probably for more fans than care to admit it, they're in tattoos.

Içi c'est Paris. This is Paris.

These days, it's more than an article of faith here. It's also a reminder. Nearly two years after a company called Qatar Sports Investments became the club's majority stakeholder, Paris Saint-Germain is virtually unrecognizable from the ambitious underachiever that it used to be.

Having acquired some $325 million worth of players since May 2011, it hasn't just engineered a side to dominate the French league—Ligue 1 is now small potatoes to the team whose new slogan is "Dream Bigger." Rather, every decision is geared toward becoming a dominant force in the world's most glamorous club competition, the Champions League.

Inevitably, that road goes through Barcelona. The sides will meet here Tuesday night in the first leg of their quarterfinal—the game that, perhaps without realizing it, Paris has spent two years preparing for.

"We play against probably the best team today and probably the best team that has ever been playing, on this planet," striker
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
said.

So for a team desperate to prove that it has arrived, the game represents uncharted territory for Paris. "In PSG, everything is new," he later added.

The club brought in international stars like Ibrahimovic,
Ezequiel Lavezzi,
and
Thiago Silva.
It added up-and-coming young talent like midfielders
Javier Pastore
and
Marco Verratti.
And most recently, it added
David Beckham.
But beyond star power and jersey sales, a closer look at Paris' new blood shows that Champions League experience was the key factor in their selection.

For the five members of the current squad who survived the owners' overhaul and have played in the competition, the combined experience in the Champions League amounts to 37 games, according to Opta Sports. The other 15, all brought in since the Qatari takeover, have 471 Champions League games between them, including at least three previous winners.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in assembling that group was convincing the players that the French league was worth competing in. Its profile, along with attendances, has steadily dropped since the mid-1990s, when French clubs routinely went deep in European competition. Marseille won the Champions League in 1993. And in 1995, Paris Saint-Germain actually beat Barcelona in the quarterfinals—it was the last time PSG would reach that stage until this season.

As recently as five years ago, UEFA, European soccer's governing body, considered France's top tier the fourth-best league in Europe, behind the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga, and Italy's Serie A.

That determination was made with UEFA's country coefficient rankings, which are based on how well a country's clubs do in European competitions and subsequently determine how many spots in those competitions are allocated to each league.

Today, France's Ligue 1 is fifth, leapfrogged by the rising force that is the German Bundesliga, and fighting off the improved Portuguese league, which is sixth and briefly overtook it last season.

This hasn't been lost on the team and its management. Over the course of the season, they have often put down the domestic league and reiterated that this is a side built to compete in the Champions League first and foremost. Some of those digs at the state of French soccer have been pointed, like those from PSG's Brazilian technical director, Leonardo, who isn't always thrilled with the quality of French referees or players' work ethic.

Others have been more general in their slights, and less subtle. Silva, a Brazilian national-team defender, actually apologized to the fans he left behind at AC Milan when he arrived in France, because his move was seen as a step down. And then there is Ibrahimovic, never afraid to speak his mind.

"They demand a lot," Ibrahimovic said of the fans early last month, after the club lost two out of four league games. "It's strange [because of] what they had before. Before they didn't have nothing."

The new players' unflattering views on France are such a constant concern that they prompted an article in Monday's edition of the French sports daily L'Equipe about how a few might finally be coming around, more than eight months after they got to Paris. The headline read, "France: They Like it Anyway."

But the question remains, is this team ready to take on Europe's big guns? Could Barcelona be coming here too soon?

At home, PSG has silenced all the critics who crowed over the club's slow start to the season and its second-place finish in the 2011-2012 campaign. This time last year, the club failed to wrest the title from the surprising upstart Montpellier. Now, PSG is eight points clear at the top of the Ligue 1 table with eight games to play.

In the five years before the Qatari takeover, PSG never finished above fourth in the league, winning less than 40% of its games. Last year, it won 60.5% and this season, on its way to a first league title in 19 years, that number is 60%.

The club's possession numbers tell a similar story. For five straight seasons, PSG controlled the ball less than half the time in league games, according to Opta Sports. Possession this season is up to 56%.

But in the Champions League there have been more nervous moments. PSG seemed to be cruising at 2-0 in its Round of 16 first leg against Valencia until the Spanish side snatched a late goal and Ibrahimovic was sent off. Then, in a dire second leg, it took Valencia's scoring first for PSG to come back to life, equalize and win 3-2 on aggregate. Over those two games, against a team that is currently sixth in the Spanish league, PSG averaged just over 35% possession.

So preparations for Barcelona have been the main concern ever since the draw was made, overshadowing league games and briefly silencing transfer gossip. There were even rumors last week that Real Madrid manager
Jose Mourinho
had sent along some tapes to help manager
Carlo Ancelotti
study the team.

"If Mourinho wants to share information, then I'm here to listen because he has a lot of experience against Barcelona," he said jokingly.

But, like PSG on the game's biggest stage, Ancelotti said it hadn't arrived just yet.

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